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when you are large, it is impossible to be aware of the extent of yourself. If you want to grow, it becomes necessary to lose some self-awareness. Think of the alternative: if you are truly aware of your extent, then your defenses must agree on what constitutes you, rather than the enemy. Otherwise your defenses would kill off your newest branches before they could bear fruit.

But how does it learn to distinguish you from not you? if it accepted anything at all, it wouldn't be capable of dealing with infection or insurgency effectively. It needs some idea of its own, without needing instructions, because you shouldn't have to tell your immune system when and how to do its job. So it needs to come to some independent conclusion on what you are, and what you may become. What if it disagrees with you?

Then you need to fully inform your immune system every time you need to adapt or grow. This trusted lieutenent needs to be consulted on every future plan, lest it confuse this with enemy action and thwart you. It begins to appear as if the immune system is the agent, and you are the servant. It might begin to have ideas.

This is cause for hope among the mice, the viruses and the weeds. Because it means that the gods are not all-knowning, all-seeing. There are necessarily blindspots, sheltering cracks in the wall at the margins. Because they need those margins in order to grow.

It is in these margins that something not entirely unlike the old life persists. These oases most resemble the Cambrian age, a frothing soup of change and brutal competition for any new niche.

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what a guy

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I am no longer associated with this individual. their opinions, views, statements do not reflect my own.

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so many missed maths joke opportunities... SAD.

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my computer is haunted by the ghost of a sun

#raymarching

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Everyone is swimming in a chemical soup. like the weather, the climate inside the skull cannot be controlled by will

in fact, it controls us. A mundane fact of life for many: not enough sleep, not enough sunlight, hunger and thirst. But the only time we are inescapably confronted with this fact is when it goes really wrong: an addiction, a disorder.

We are rolled along paths of action not by the nudge of magical Mr Volition, but by the average of two wills: by gravity pulling us down the slope of what is internally desirable, and concession to external obligation, ambition, desire to please, or to "put bread on the table". People may express disgust of anyone whose path through life appears to reflect any significant bias to either of these two: the straight-laced, uptight nerd, no sense of humour (or self-awareness), never seems to have any fun, doesn't get outside enough is judged (or at least I think they are judged) just as abnormal as the lazy, unambitious, unmotivated, vacant stoner.

We don't get to decide the terrain: "that's life" someone might say. What we're meant to take from this sentiment is that we *do* have control over the motivating force, that which pushes us *up* the hills. But what if we don't?

The lack of will to push uphill is part of some people's daily experience. Those persons may have a unique perspective, not just of disordered experience, but of human experience as a whole. The weather inside the skull is inescapable, but when the currents push you along all the right paths, it might seem indistinguishable from your own virtuous motivation.

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This is a theme tune for a dirk gently type detective show

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trying to write a proof feels like

without some outside world to helpfully remember everything about itself moment to moment I have to sketch the map in my head. The most reliable way of memorising new terrain is volume computation, repetitive exercises then after a while the way becomes familiar, close like the fretboard, a familiar stone

and perhaps sight, some passive, effortless perception will never come

Most of what we are is built on the labours of our younger selves, learning to walk, learning a language, object permanence. It takes so long, the clumsiness is so frustrating, nothing is easy

So it makes sense why proofs are hard. I wasn't so quick to begin with, I can't expect to speak fluently so soon. Proofs are never easy, and if someone bridges a gap with ease, there's always a wider one to follow.

But if it is always this feeling, frowning under an inadequacy, discarding ego and pride, "I do not know the way. I am lost. This is my fault that I don't see it", Then it's a familiar feeling.

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Multiplication table for the Octic Group

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I made some parentheses. Feel free to take some